When Kiwi.com was founded in Brno in 2012, it set out to solve a fundamental travel problem: connecting flights across airlines that don’t normally cooperate. Today, the platform handles over 100 million flight searches and processes billions of price checks every day. We spoke with Michal Šindelář, VP of Product, who has been with Kiwi.com for over a decade, about how artificial intelligence is transforming travel from a stressful logistical task into an effortless experience.
Convenience, certainty, and the Kiwi.com experience
Kiwi.com fundamentally changed how people book flights. How would you describe the core product today to someone using it for the first time?
At its core, Kiwi.com is about convenience and peace of mind. We want to make travel simpler and far less stressful, so travelers don’t have to worry about whether they chose the right flight, whether they’ll miss a connection, or whether they have all the necessary documentation.
Our Virtual Interlining technology and the Kiwi.com Guarantee remove those anxieties, even when combining flights across completely unpartnered airlines. That allows us to deliver unique, cost-effective routes you simply cannot find anywhere else. We don’t just sell plane tickets; we offer a reliable travel platform that takes care of the whole journey.
From a 24-person startup to a global platform
You’ve been with Kiwi.com for over ten years. How has the product evolved since those early days?
I joined when there were only 24 of us and the company wasn’t even named Kiwi.com yet. It was a typical startup atmosphere where everyone did a bit of everything, from writing code to cleaning the kitchen.
We’ve grown into a global platform, but our core ethos of speed, technology, and constant innovation remains unchanged. What set us apart in the beginning, our ability to connect non-cooperating carriers, remains our biggest advantage today. Coupled with the Kiwi.com Guarantee, we give travelers both unique routes and the confidence that their trip is protected from start to finish.
Michal Šindelář, VP of Product at Kiwi.com.
Leveraging AI across product development
Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence today. How is your team using AI internally to improve product quality?
We don’t view AI as merely a tool to speed up work; we see it as a way to raise the quality of everything we build. Across the product team, we use AI in almost every phase, from testing ideas and rapid prototyping to analyzing data and making strategic decisions. This allows us to deliver higher-quality innovations more efficiently.
The biggest impact is visible in customer satisfaction. Our custom AI agent is directly connected to our internal services and handles real customer issues, successfully resolving around 80% of cases without human intervention while driving up satisfaction scores. It’s not just a basic chatbot; it’s an intelligent system that actively works with live travel data to deliver immediate solutions.
Reimagining flight search for the AI era
What is the next major product innovation travelers can look forward to on Kiwi.com?
The biggest shift currently underway is in how people search for travel inspiration and book flights. Historically, you had to visit a website, manually select dates, enter a destination, and filter through results.
The new interfaces we are testing utilize large language models to turn search into a conversational travel assistant. Instead of picking dates, a traveler can simply type: ‘I want to go somewhere warm for five days, reasonably priced, where I can surf.’ The AI then recommends relevant destinations, optimal dates, and tailored flight itineraries. We plan to roll out this functionality early next year.
Eliminating travel friction automatically
How do features like Auto Check-in and the Kiwi.com Guarantee simplify the actual travel journey?
Auto Check-in completely removes a major headache. Travelers no longer need to navigate individual airline websites, each with different designs, rules, and technical requirements. Our system automatically submits the required details, completes check-in, and delivers a Live Boarding Pass directly to the Kiwi.com app. It updates in real time with gate numbers, terminal information, and flight schedule changes.
The Kiwi.com Guarantee complements this by providing a safety net in the event of disruptions. Air travel is dynamic, and delays or cancellations happen. Where standard airline protections fall short, especially on self-transfer connections, our Guarantee steps in. If a flight is delayed or canceled, we instantly credit the customer’s Kiwi.com account so they can immediately book an alternative flight without navigating complex airline claims.
The future of personalized travel
Looking ahead, how will AI continue to shape the way people travel?
Travel will become significantly more personalized and intuitive. AI systems will understand a traveler’s personal style, budget, layover preferences, and constraints, recommending destinations and routes they might never have considered on their own.
What keeps me motivated after all these years is knowing that over 100 million people use Kiwi.com to search for flights every day. There is still enormous room to make travel simpler, faster, and more worry-free, and AI is the key to getting us there even faster.
